


Five Kisses (Harry/Luna)

by ghost_lingering



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, First Kisses, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-26
Updated: 2006-02-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:10:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_lingering/pseuds/ghost_lingering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>five kisses</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Kisses (Harry/Luna)

I.

Boneless and tired, you feel someone take your glasses off, pull the book out from under your (not) sleep wrinkled cheek. _Hermione,_ you think. Then, _I haven't figured out a way to beat him yet._ Gentle hands guide you up to your feet and to a bed, beneath covers. "Don't worry," she says, kissing the corner of your mouth (_strawberry_, you think, _feta_), "I have some ideas about potions from snub-nosed whelchers. We'll win, in the end." Not Hermione, then. You sleep, strangely pleased.

II.

Your mouth tastes like hospital gauze, and you can still hear Molly Weasley crying in the hall, though the nurses led her out an hour ago. Ears buzz and a machine beeps beside you. It makes you think of Arthur Weasley who can no longer ask about how it works.

The door creaks open, and you hear footsteps approach and stop. You feel something wet and gritty against your check and trailing down your neck. Turning your head a bit you see Luna through a potted plant on the pillow next to you. Dirt is spilling over the white sheets.

"It's a potted petunia," she says, "I heard people were supposed to bring flowers to hospital patients and this was in the muggle shop down the road." She smiles. "I like muggles-there are men who wear dresses, and children who know how to pretend, and boxes with moving pictures, and bicycles. They believe anything. I want to study biology."

She sits down and talks as you close your eyes, feeling like you could sleep for the first time in days. You think you hear her leave and feel her press a kiss to your forehead, but that could be the dreams that, for the first time in years, are not of _him_, but of flower petals and canoes and laughter.

III.

There is mud and rain, which splashes the mud up every time a drop hits the ground. You live in the country, now. There is some laughter, muted, from inside the house, drunken. You, too, are drunken, but outside and alone with the firewhiskey bottle loose between your fingers. You don't drink often, but tonight-it wasn't supposed to be like this. Or, rather, Ginny laughing and Seamus looking bewildered, more surprised at getting married than at staying alive-this is exactly how it is supposed to be. Godfather to Granger-Weasleys, colleague of Neville-this is your life and it's fucking perfect.

Except for the fact that it's so anti-climatic.

A shift of cloth behind you and you look around. "Luna," you say, "why aren't you in the party?"

She sits down, lavender dress getting stained with mud.

"I got bored," she says, "Everyone thinks that mitochondria are made up-they keep asking why I live in a muggle neighborhood, don't use magic." She wraps her arms around her legs. "I'm moving, you know. Vancouver. After I graduate. They offered me a teaching position. The Canadian ministry doesn't care if I publish magical biology in muggle papers."

Harry nods. During the war, wizards had hidden as muggles, and, for Luna, it stuck. Luna's theories, while unorthodox, weren't sneered at by the muggle world. After she explained potion brewing to her introductory chemistry teacher and showed him the results, Luna was giving papers right and left. Odd, he thinks, that it took Voldemort for the knowledge of wizards to be released to the public.

"You should go in and dance," she says, reaching for the bottle, and chugging. "Everyone's asking after you."

You nod and get up, pausing for her to come with, but she waves you on. On an impulse you reach down and kiss her hair. "Have fun in Canada," you say.

IV.

McGonagall likes Neville's plan to integrate magical and muggle subjects into the new Hogwarts curriculum. You're teaching defense. Not against the dark arts, just defense. It includes units like kickboxing and Sex Ed. You co-teach it with a muggle woman. She's one of eight muggle teachers. Hogwarts is no longer magic only: there are twenty muggles in the school and the number is expected to rise every year.

The only wizards who teach are Neville, Draco, Flitwick, McGonagall, and yourself. Even Binns is gone. And now that the school is no longer a boarding school, you go home at night, and sleep in your own house. The most familiar thing is Draco, still sneering at you in the halls that his house will win football and quidditch this term.

You get letters from Luna every month; she thinks the changes are fabulous. She tells you how she is studying the effects of magical radiation on single celled organisms, how her roommates have painted the walls avocado green, how she has fallen in love with cheep muggle candy. ("Like Dumbledore," she writes, and nothing about the statement stings, anymore.)

You wear velour sweaters and brown pants. Polyester, Hermione tells you. She is a politician, trying to bring together all the factions of each world. She wants a unified government for England. "We're all British," she says. Ron stays at home with the kids. You visit them every Sunday, sometimes baby-sit on Friday nights.

You write to Luna about the sparrows making a nest under your gutters, about the new game your third years have created (now banned) with two to a broom, so that the muggles could fly too. You tell her that Draco teaches math, now; a muggle has started teaching potions. You try to make almond brittle one day, to send her, and black smoke ends up staining the ceiling, and you have to open the windows for days to get rid of the smell. You could remove the ceiling stain with magic, but it reminds you of a Grim, so you keep it, and the next time Lupin visits he laughs, full bellied and loud. Tonks sits there, confused, and you smile at her, tentatively, but Lupin doesn't explain it to her and your conversation moves to other things, though his eyes continue look up, and he continues to smile.

When you write to Luna about it, you don't get a response for over a week. You try not to be hurt, but then a fed ex package comes to your door. Inside are pink skittles, Hershey kisses, caramels, gummy bears. "Stick to buying your candy," the note says, "it will taste sweeter that way."

V.

Luna returns to England with a teaching position at Cambridge, short hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. "I don't want to cast any magic on my eyes," she tells you when you meet her at the airport and try to snag her luggage off the baggage claim.

You eat dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. It is dark, with patterned fabric on the wall, hanging lamps, dark wood tables so small you keep bumping knees. Luna holds her food out in front of you. "Eat it," she says, waving her fork a little. "Open up the hanger..."

You frown, and she laughs. "A muggle friend of mine does that to her daughter. 'Open the hanger, and the airplane fliiiiies in.' You're too skinny. Eat!"

She is nothing like how she used to be. "Do you still chase those crazy animals of yours?" you ask, later, after you have eaten half of her food, after she has stolen half of yours. You suddenly can't remember if the restaurant is muggle or magic. You look around, but you only see people, just people, eating, the low murmur of conversation over the music.

Luna is quiet, for several moments, and you start to fidget. "I didn't mean-" you begin, but she shakes her head.

"I do," she says, "in a different way. I don't stand out as unusual in the muggle world, because it's so much bigger. Being a muggle is like..." She pauses, her eyes focused on something over your right shoulder, and her voice dreamy, but a sharper kind, more real, than the tone she used to have at school. "There are limitless possibilities," she finally says, "anything can happen. It's nothing like Hogwarts."

She looks at you and you swallow, lean forward, over the too small table and the empty dishes. Her lips are chapped and spicy against your own, already burning with lemon grass and ginger.


End file.
